Hearts of Iron IV is the latest installment of Paradox Interactive’s HeartsofIron series of grand strategy games, covering the rough time period surrounding World War 2 (1936-1948, though previous games have bumped the cap all the way up to 1964). Prior to Europa Universalis III, the Hearts of Iron series was Paradox’s best-selling product, allowing the player to take control of an country in the world during the conflict, from the great powers of the Allies and Axis, all the way down to tiny little Bhutan. The Hearts of Iron series (mainly HOI2) have been showcased in almost all of the major goon mega-LP’s that span the entire timeline of Paradox games.

I thought Hearts of Iron 3 was a poo poo game? What’s different now?

Hearts of Iron 3 is sortof a sad story. It was broken at launch in ways that are pretty much unthinkable for modern Paradox games, and suffered a lot from questionable design, bad AI, overcomplexity, and piss-poor optimization. As with most Paradox games it gradually got better over time (and with expansions), but it remains a mediocre game. Still, it has a small but dedicated base of people who somehow insist that it's great.

With Hearts of Iron 4, Paradox has spent several years in what has generally been a quite long development cycle to re-examine the holy cows of the Hearts of Iron series and to make sure they hit this nail on the head. A short bulleted summary of the major changes:

Historical railroading is now less of a thing. There are two game modes to choose from at start: one where things will tend to follow more of a historical path that leads to WW2 starting in August of 1939, and another where things are slightly more open-ended in a vein similar to CK2 or EU4. In the latter, you tend to see some interesting ahistorical events like the rise of the French Commune, a civil war in the Soviet Union, a union between France and Great Britain...

Micromanagement of your armies is now supposed to be much less of a thing. In HOI3 you had the very basic option of letting the AI control your armies, setting simple goals for them (“take Warsaw”), that they would then attempt to carry out. Unfortunately this never quite worked in HOI3, and Paradox has re-examined it and made the system much more robust. You can now create your own overall grand strategy for each army to carry out, drawing fun little arrows on the map to plan your corridors of invasion, timings, etc. It seems to aim for a replication of a “war room” experience, where general staff would plan the top-level operational strategy of the war. However, direct control of all units is still in, for players who want the classic experience.

While HOI4 is still very much a wargame, the reduced focus on micromanagement means the scope of the game has changed somewhat. In previous titles, pretty much the sole focus of play was on fighting and winning wars via direct control of everything. In HOI4, that focus remains to a degree, but you are now very much managing a country at war.

Production has changed greatly. Instead of building individual units, which cost IC points, as in previous titles, you are now setting up production lines and assigning priorities to them. For example, if you know you’re going to be fighting a massive air war, you may decide to set up a production line to spit out Hawker Hurricanes. Over time, you will get more and more efficient at producing Hawker Hurricanes. At some point they will become outdated, and the player is then faced with the choice of continuing to pump out this workhorse plane, or switch to a shiny new Spitfire, at the cost of losing some efficiency.

Control of your country’s politics is also enhanced, and the player is now able to determine which of the three ideologies to side with, regardless of which country you play. As the USA, you can choose to appoint Communist or Fascist advisors, which will gradually increase the power of those factions and lead to them taking power -- though probably not without fighting a Second American Civil War first!

Aren’t Paradox games just one big DLC-fest?

Yes and no. Paradox has a fairly unique continuous development cycle for all of their internally-developed titles, with games continuing to be supported with regular new content for years after their release. Crusader Kings 2 was released in like 2011 and is still getting regular expansions. Also unique to Paradox is the release of huge free patches with each expansion, providing all players with some of the content of the expansions for nothing. The DLC model is meant to be a la carte based on what the player wants in their game (“want to play Vikings in CK2? Buy The Old Gods,” etc.). The same is likely to be true for Hearts of Iron 4.

Also there’s a bunch of cosmetic DLC that is purely optional. The music DLC’s tend to be very good though, and Andreas Waldetoft is probably one of the best composers that nobody has heard of in the business. Also, Paradox DLC and their games in general go on sale really often.

What about multiplayer?

In the past few years, Paradox has placed a much greater focus on their multiplayer development. Paradox multiplayer games now have pretty good netcode, and are known for being a lot of fun. There is currently a long-standing group of goons who play weekly Paradox multiplayer, MapGoons. It’s fun, there’s diplomacy and backstabbing, and shooting the poo poo with goons for 3 hours at a time while politicking and warring is pretty great.

For HOI4, Paradox has also added the option of co-op country management. If it’s just you and a buddy, the both of you can control the same country, dividing the duties up between yourselves. This could potentially result in some hilarious Japan games where one player takes over the IJA and another the IJN, simulating the infamous real-world rivalry between army and navy in the Japanese Empire.

Expansions/DLC

Together for Victory: The first post-release expansion, which offers unique focus trees for the Commonwealth countries, plus new subject interaction/production/annexation mechanics, autonomy system for subjects, Lend-Lease changes, technology sharing, and spearhead battleplans. Release: 15 Dec 2016

Death or Dishonor: Unique focus trees and ahistorical options for Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia; conversion of outdated equipment; new diplomacy including ability to purchase equipment production licenses from other nations; new puppet interactions for Axis. Release: 14 Jun 2017

Waking the Tiger: Asia-focused DLC. Includes long-awaited focus trees for Nat. China and the PRC, as well as tweaked focus trees for Germany and Japan that allow them to do more ahistorical stuff (bring back the Kaiser as Germany, go Democratic, make August von Mackensen your leader, etc.). Also some stuff about assigning air wings to ground commanders, and bringing back a slightly more HOI3-reminiscent system of assigning generals to field marshals. Lots and lots of miscellaneous tweaks (and the introduction of EU4-style decisions) came along with this DLC in the free "Cornflakes" patch. Release: 8 March 2018

Man the Guns: Navy-focused DLC (and re-introduction of Fuel as a resource to be stockpiled), details still largely forthcoming. We know there will be some focus on alternate history paths for the Americas as well ("Second American Civil War" and a Confederate battle flag are both seen/mentioned in the teaser trailer). Release TBD

Mods

Kaiserreich: the much-loved Darkest Hour total conversion mod is coming to HOI4! Development is still in very early days and is only pre-release, but keep an eye on it. Currently infamous for bloated focus trees, a fanatic community, and weird design choices. Kaiserreich mod team are also VERY visible at Paradox events.

Après Moi, Le Déluge: an alternate history mod by our very own Enjoy, based on how the world might have unfolded if Napoleon had won. Very fun in multiplayer.

The Great War: a really popular World War 1 conversion mod. Overall good.

Millennium Dawn: a really popular but also really bad modern-day conversion mod that lets you conquer the world as ISIS, institute monarchy in the US, bring back the Nazis in Germany, or unite the EU into a game-breaking powerhouse. It has some background ideas that are mildly interesting, but overall suffers from the fact that HOI4 can't simulate modern warfare at all.

The Road to '56: a kitchen sink mod that contains a ton of little adjustments. It seems to be pretty popular, but it's got some issues (namely that the AI has absolutely no clue what to do with all the new focus trees, which leads to WW2 never happening as it did IRL). Still fun to play around with for a bit.

Rules of Thumb for Hearts of Iron 4:
1: Industry is maximum priority. Devote one research slot to it at all times.
1a: Land Doctrine is maximum priority. Devote one research slot to it at all times.

2: Infantry Equipment is how you convert useless manpower to useful divisions. It's also the cheapest thing in the game. If you have to ration your factories, focus on Infantry.
2a: Air Contesting is high priority, because air superiority bonus is good and having enemy CAS active is really bad. Always be producing fighters. If you have to ration your factories, put 8 aluminum on fighters and the rest on infantry.

3: Rule of thumb, you can have a good air force or a good navy, not both.
3a: The best navy is land-based naval bombers.
3b: Either way, keep your air/sea doctrine cooking if you can spare the research time. Ships need that organization to not die, and planes need those bonuses to really wreck poo poo.

4: Infrastructure provides +10% construction speed per level. That means develop high infrastructure provinces first. Build Infrastructure for the first year, and do it in provinces with more than four open building slots to get the most out of it.

5: Most starting infantry divisions are okay, but not great. Rebuild them into 7/2 Infantry/Artillery divisions as soon as you can spare the army XP. That gives you 20 combat width (ie cram four of them into one battle), and the line artillery gives you excellent soft attack compared to raw infantry.
5a: Engineer, Recon, and Artillery support are very good. Put them on everything. If you're running armoured divisions, put Maintenance support on them or you'll wind up losing as many tanks to breakdowns as you do to the enemy :wehrmacht:

6: Tanks are really good. Most warfare in HoI boils down to force concentration, breakthrough, then exploitation (if you have armour and mobile units), or grinding infantry slogs if you don't have breakthrough divisions. Tanks have very high breakthrough, which means they're very good at attacking, and they also have the mobility to follow through with the breakthrough. Support them with Motorized (or Mechanized if you're made of factories) in order to hold the territory, because tanks are bad at defending.

Production Quotas: Applying Algebra to HoI4
Division requirements are constant - you need this many rifles and this many guns in this much time to create an infantry division. Knowing [equipment] we can determine [production required] and from that [production per day]. Divide that by [production per factory] to determine the number of factories required to produce this division. Finally, modify that by your factory output bonus and production efficiency, which are both percentages to obtain the final number. That is, either how many factories you need to produce N divisions, or how many divisions can be created by N factories. I'll show a couple examples here.

Infantry Equipment I is 0.5 prod/unit, Truck is 2.5 prod/unit, Light Tank II is 9 prod/unit
That means we need: 1100 production of Rifles, 2750 production of Trucks, 4320 production of Light Tank II
All that in 180 days, which gives us 6.1 prod/day of Rifles, 15.3 prod/day of Trucks, 24 prod/day of Light Tank II
Base production is 5 prod per factory per day, so factory count is thus 2:4:5 Rifles:Trucks:Pz.II to produce the light armour spearhead, modified by factory output & production efficiency.

Infantry Equipment I is 0.5 prod/unit, Basic Cannon is 3.5 prod/unit, Support is 4 prod/unit
This means we need 3000 production of Rifles, 2352 production of Cannon, and 1280 production of Support
All that in 120 days, which gives us 25 prod/day of Rifles, 19.6 prod/day of Cannon, and 10.6 prod/day of Support
Base production is 5 prod per factory per day, so factory count is this 5:4:3 Rifles:Cannon:Support to produce 8 Infantry Divisions, modified by factory output & production efficiency.

The real caveat to this is modified by factory output and production efficiency. See, game starts in 1936 with a maximum of 50% production efficiency, which means that batch of eight infantry would require 24 factories to cook, not 12, assuming you let them all crawl up the PE gain falloff curve to 50% production efficiency. That's horrible, so the first thing you want to do is get your PE cap up and the second thing you want to do is get your factory output up to offset sub-100% PE. That means your first techs should always be Basic Machine Tools, then 1936 Machine Tools and 1936 Concentrated/Dispersed Industry. Each level of machine tools gives you another 10% PE cap, and each level of Concentrated Industry gives you +15% factory output (10% for dispersed, if you plan on getting bombed ). So those three 1936 techs give you +20% PE cap and +15% factory output for 85% of maximum production. Then, once 1937 rolls around you can pick up another set of machine tools and industry for another +25% effective output (110% total), and again at 1939 (135% total) and so on. That means at gamestart, that 5 to 4 to 3 block of factories in the example will struggled to equip four infantry divisions, but in 1939 that same block of factories will easily equip ten and almost have enough to equip eleven. So we come back to rule number one, industry techs are always maximum priority.

Didn't they say they were going to use the blacked-out portrait as the default for all countries, but those who aren't in Germany would get it "activated" by a DLC that everyone automatically gets at launch (except Germans)? Or was that just a silly rumor?

We have reached the age of Hitler DLC.

While I love all of the leader portraits their artists have done for this game, I really honestly think they should have done Hitler's up in a Looney Tunes caricature style instead of going for full-on glorious Nazi propaganda of blue-eyed, Iron Cross-wearing Hitler.

Didn't they say they were going to use the blacked-out portrait as the default for all countries, but those who aren't in Germany would get it "activated" by a DLC that everyone automatically gets at launch (except Germans)? Or was that just a silly rumor?

Yeah, but you see, the German version is geolocked and that's basically the holocaust all over again. People are literally unironically canceling preorders over it.

Really the only thing I care about is whether my German version plays nice with mods and MP, and if it means that I have to use the no doubt terrible German translation.

Yeah, but you see, the German version is geolocked and that's basically the holocaust all over again. People are literally unironically canceling preorders over it.

Really the only thing I care about is whether my German version plays nice with mods and MP, and if it means that I have to use the no doubt terrible German translation.

For what it's worth, I live in Germany too and I'm nearly positive that you can play the German version in the English language. No Hitler portrait for us though.

It's not like this is exactly a new thing for Paradox, and it is German law. In previous Hearts of Iron incarnations, the German versions even went so far as to completely rename Hitler (to Alois Hiller or something like that)

Even if they release Hitler DLC™ geo-locked, I'm confident that within 48 hours someone will have an unofficial patch in the form of a mod that contains the unlocked graphic file. And the type of people bitching are also probably the kind that can figure out how to install a mod. It's really no big deal and people need to chill the hell out.

Even if they release Hitler DLC™ geo-locked, I'm confident that within 48 hours someone will have an unofficial patch in the form of a mod that contains the unlocked graphic file. And the type of people bitching are also probably the kind that can figure out how to install a mod. It's really no big deal and people need to chill the hell out.

Germans using mods the Hitler portrait cannot get achievements in Ironman.

Even if they release Hitler DLC™ geo-locked, I'm confident that within 48 hours someone will have an unofficial patch in the form of a mod that contains the unlocked graphic file. And the type of people bitching are also probably the kind that can figure out how to install a mod. It's really no big deal and people need to chill the hell out.

I think you misunderstand how paradox interactive are violating my human rights.

By the way does anyone want to help me with my mod to accurately represent the OOB of every SS division ?

Germans using mods the Hitler portrait cannot get achievements in Ironman.

It's gonna happen.

Couldn't they just get the Hitler portrait .DDS file from the international version from a friend/associate and replace it with the one in the game's base files, then? I don't know if this would alter the checksum and/or if this is what disabling achievements checks.

Don't forget that they completely redid logistics in a way that's less resource intensive to simulate, easier for the computer to make decisions based on and making everybody freak the gently caress out because why couldn't Hitler build some Speer-sized pseudo-neoclassical monstrosity of a gas tank and fill it with enough fuel in 1936 to last him for the whole war?

Don't forget that they completely redid logistics in a way that's less resource intensive to simulate, easier for the computer to make decisions based on and making everybody freak the gently caress out because why couldn't Hitler build some Speer-sized pseudo-neoclassical monstrosity of a gas tank and fill it with enough fuel in 1936 to last him for the whole war?

Tbh stockpiling was a large part of the pre war game in hoi2. Yes Stalin, I vant to buy all your oil and rare metals. Vat for you ask, oh nothing really, just vorking on my Lebensraum.

But the new system looks good and if the paradox forums are mad about it it has to be good.